Anna Peregrine--Hollow City

Chapter Eight

A coffin should have been where we found the ladder. I looked down to see a dark void.

"There's no way I'm climbing down there!" Horace said as more bombs fell outside. "Excuse me, out of my way, best-dressed go first."

Emma grabbed him by the sleeve, "I have the light, so I'll go first. Then Anna will follow since she is our Ymbryne, and then Jacob, in case there are . . . things down there."

"You mean things other than rats and cholera and whatever sorts of mad trolls live beneath crypts?" Enoch asked.

"It doesn't matter what's down there, we'll have to face it, and that's that," Millard answered.

"Fine. But Miss Wren had better be down there too, because rat bites don't heal quickly."

"Hollowgast bites even less so," I said as Emma climbed down the ladder.

"Be careful," Jacob said to her.

"We'll be right above you," I said.

She saluted us, "Once more into the breach."

She climbed down, and soon I did after her.

"Do you ever find yourself climbing into an open grave during a bombing raid, and just wish you'd stay in bed?" Jacob asked.

"Quit stalling," Enoch said.

My boyfriend soon joined us. The three of us stood as we waited for the others to climb down as the cold set in. As soon as everyone was down, Bronwyn opened her trunk, giving out the sweaters we received at the menagerie. I slipped one over my blazer before setting my mother into the folds of it.

We all started walking. Whenever we heard the flapping of wings, we would hurry our steps. We kept on passing stones that we had seen above, and a coffin, and then stacks of them.

"What is this place?" Hugh whispered.

"Graveyard overflow. When they need to make room for new customers, they dig up the old ones and stick them down here," Enoch answered.

"What a terrible loop entrance. Imagine walking through here every time you needed in or out!" I said.

"It's not so different from our cairn tunnel. Unpleasant loop entrances serve a purpose--normals tend to avoid them, so we peculiars have them all to ourselves," Millard said.

"Good point," I replied.

"Uh-oh.", Emma said, stopping in her tracks.

I looked ahead to see a door popped open, darkness beyond it. We all listened only to hear something. Not a flap of a wing or the scratch of talons, but human. Someone crying.

"Hello? Who's in there?" I called calmly, feeling a pull.

"Please don't hurt me," came a voice that sounded like two.

Emma lightened her flame as I crept forward, nudging the door open with my foot to find bones.

"Hello? Who said that? Show yourself!" I said.

Someone sniffled. I looked in as two pairs of eyes looked back at me.

"There's no one here," a voice said.

"Go away. We're dead," another said.

"No you're not, and I would know!" Enoch said.

I felt the pull going to two different people, "Come out of there. We're not going to hurt you."

"Promise?" both voices said.

"We promise."

The bones shifted as two little boys came walking out of the corridor. Their skin was pale with dark circles around their eyes.